47 arrested in raids vs. human smuggling

Feds: 5 shuttle companies used vans to carry migrants

An elaborate human-smuggling network that ferried tens of thousands of illegal immigrants into Arizona using shuttle vans was broken up Thursday during a series of raids, federal authorities said.

In what officials called the biggest operation of its kind targeting illegal-immigrant smuggling, 47 people were arrested at five companies in Phoenix, Tucson and Nogales during sweeps involving more than 800 federal agents and local police.

Mexican police rounded up more people south of the border in the culmination of a two-year Immigration and Customs Enforcementinvestigation into human smuggling linked to Mexican drug cartels.

Owners and employees at the shuttle-van companies are accused of bringing illegal immigrants from Mexico into Arizona, where they often were placed in drophouses and later transported to other U.S. cities.

The organization targeted in the raids is accused of illegally transporting more than 80,000 immigrants into the U.S. in the past 10 years. They brought daily van loads of undocumented migrants into the country, using Phoenix as a primary hub.

The federal agents on Thursday raided Sergio's Shuttles in Phoenix, in the 2800 block of West Van Buren Street, and four more businesses in Tucson - Saguaro Roadrunner Shuttles, America's Shuttles, Sonoran Shuttles and Nogales Express Shuttles. Authorities said the raids could lead to the forfeiture of $10 million in assets from suspects, including homes, bank accounts and vehicles.

Those arrested are expected to make their initial court appearances today in Phoenix and Tucson on charges of conspiracy to transport undocumented immigrants.Authorities had previously arrested 16 people as part of the investigation and also picked up othersin Tennessee on Thursday.

Immigrant-advocacy groups decried the raids as a scare tactic planned in line with this week's passage of a state legislative bill that would make it a crime in Arizona to be in the country illegally.

The ICE investigation initially focused on several Tucson-based companies before it expanded to Nogales and the Valley, eventually revealing "a network of confederated smuggling organizations," said John Morton, U.S. Homeland Security assistant secretary for ICE.

Morton said the case marked a shift in how the federal government targets transnational crime along the Southwest border, taking on organizations connected to Mexican drug cartels known to control widescale human-smuggling operations.

"This is not a mom-and-pop organization," Morton said. "It's major international crime occurring across borders with profits literally into the billions."

The shuttle businesses named in a federal indictment provided immigrants with phony $30 bus tickets and fake border-crossing cards to avoid raising suspicions at U.S. law-enforcement highway checkpoints, authorities said. The businesses shared information and worked together to maintain a consistent profit, according to indictments.

Investigators said immigrants primarily met smugglers in Mexico, where they negotiated their complicated route to final destinations throughout the U.S. Most crossed the border on foot by walking through the desert to circumvent the Nogales port of entry.

Once on the U.S. side, immigrants would mostly continue on foot to areas in southern Arizona where they could get picked up and taken to the shuttle-van stations in Tucson, authorities said.

Immigrants paid the organization as little as $700 for transportation from northern Mexico to the U.S. However, authorities said one Chinese immigrant paid $75,000 to be smuggled into Arizona.

"The system was set up through Mexico that they knew where to go and who to talk to and how to get to that shuttle," said U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, whose office is prosecuting the cases in U.S. District Court.

Authorities identified three primary individuals responsible for running their operations from Sonora to Phoenix:

• Claudio Ramirez-Morales, who is accused of running the smuggling organization from Mexico.

• Sandra Luz Flores-Anzo, who authorities said worked out of Phoenix to arrange to transport the undocumented immigrants.

Burke and Morton said the case involved "unprecedented" intelligence-sharing with Mexican law enforcement, who served search warrants and made additional arrests on Thursday. U.S. officials could not provide specifics about how Mexican authorities were involved.

They said the case was comparable to a recent operation in Houston, which focused on shuttle companies used as a front to smuggle illegal immigrants.

Burke and others, including Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, downplayed questions about the raids being linked with Wednesday's passage of Senate Bill 1070 through the Arizona House. The bill would make it a crime in Arizona to be in the country illegally and would require police to check individuals' immigration status. It has yet to be signed into law.

Salvador Reza, a Phoenix-based immigrant-rights activist who protested the raids Thursday, accused the feds of planning the raids and leaking word of the raids to the media as a scare tactic in line with the Arizona political announcements.

"By today, everyone knew about it," Reza said. "The fear in the (immigrant) community is at its highest."

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Arizona Interfaith Network and other Latino advocacy groups questioned the timing of the raids.

Burke, Goddard and other officials disagreed, saying the investigation began nearly two years ago.